Copying filesystems preserving files' metadata

Something that I've never really solved, and over the years have always resorted to some of the methods outlined below, none satisfactory.

I need to move filesystems to another VG. I want to preserve "everything" (dates, permissions). Ideally I'd first copy the fs and after successful completion, rmfs the src fs. I have tried the following, but none "does it":

I assume that cplv may work as I wish, same goes for dd; but both would require to umount the fs for the op, not really desirable. More than that, they would probably fail if I consider the following additional issue: - of the fs I need to copy, some are JFS, and I wish to make them JFS2. Add to that the fact that I have quota on them.

rsync from source to destination while the systems live, - at outage time, make sure source is not in use, I usually unmount and remount on a temp location. perform a final rsync and mount up in the correct location.

Advantages... you can perform an rsync on live data so when you take that data offline, rsync should only need to copy the changed files.

migrated 3.5TB of DB2 databases from one system to another, minimal DT where changes are required that cant be done on the fly (eg fs or vg change attribute change...)

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